Week 1: Understanding your skills and abilities

Introduction

You might know what job you want to do in the future, or you might not. But whichever it is, you do need to understand your existing skill set to decide whether you can do your preferred job, or to guide you in deciding what jobs you are best suited to. It might be that you have some of the skills necessary, but not all of them. So, this week you’ll consider the knowledge and skills you already have and how you might want to add to these to meet your goals. You’ll need your notebook to jot down your thoughts and responses to the activities.

By the end of this week, you will be able to:

• list the knowledge, skills and experience you already have
• identify which knowledge, skills and experience you want to develop
• understand any changes you might want to make to your knowledge and skills in order to pursue your job goals.

The labour market in Myanmar is a mixed picture. More than a third of workers own a family farm and another quarter own a non-agricultural household business. Of the rest, half work in small firms while the other half work in large, domestic or foreign firms and government jobs. The large number of agricultural jobs means that much work is seasonal although unemployment is negligible. This gives rise to a lot of casual employment which is uncertain and low paid (Cunningham and Monoz, 2019).

However, the labour market is maturing in Myanmar. Employers in the bigger foreign and domestic firms are becoming smart when selecting candidates for interview. They look into their experience and skills and consider whether the candidate is a good fit for the organisational culture (Bruce, 2019). To become a convincing candidate when applying for jobs in the private sector, a candidate needs to know how to sell themselves to the employer. This course enables you to better understand your knowledge and skills so that you can present a more polished and professional ‘you’ to the employer both in your application and at interview. It is a course that can propel you on to the career trajectory you want and deserve.

To find out more about the labour market in Myanmar, read this brief review [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)]   carried out by a team of academics and university support staff at Yadanabon University in 2020.